Faith in Numbers
by HayashiOkami
Summary: A copycat arsonist forces the team to take the original unsub out of jail to put a stop to the murders. When their only clue to solving the case breaks out and runs away, they discover that he is after someone, someone he must find no matter what.
1. First Chapter is an Exchange of Info

_**Faith in Numbers**_

_Existentialism: the tenant that the world is essentially meaningless and absurd, and that any attempt to come to terms with this absurdity brings one into conflict with the world._

…_In other words, we as human beings can choose the paths we take and we must face the consequences for those actions in a world that does not make sense._

_And I, I decided to take this one._

_**The First Chapter is an Exchange of Information**_

The handcuffs itched. He considered their coldness with a wry smirk, listening to the papers shuffle across the table and the metal links gently scrape against each other. When his hopes had all but dissipated and the blue skies beyond the seven-foot high fences no longer shone with the same glorious light as before, these chains had barely bothered him. A certain vitality that he never expected to return lazily flowed through his veins, clearing his eyes of the thin fog that had engulfed them.

An unforeseeable change of events had been thrust into his lap, ready for the taking, so fortunate that he was almost convinced it was but a dream. Such an opportunity had been all he dreamt for five or six years, but never had he believed it possible to obtain in this life. It took a large portion of his willpower to restrain the grotesque mixture of a grin and a smirk from marring his otherwise calm face. If he hadn't spent a better part of the last decade perfecting these neutral expressions, it might not have been possible.

His eyes flickered over the whiteboard ahead as per request, skimming the intimately familiar scenes with distaste. A muscle in his back released a random spasm, perhaps from the pressure these handcuffs wrought on his arms. With an audible groan he rolled his shoulders the best he could and leaned back in the chair. The FBI agents fixed him with intermittent stares, observing movements and behaviors he probably had no idea he possessed. He grinned at one, the man who had vied for his temporary release.

It was a peculiar dilemma on the whiteboard. He had previously informed the agents that his crimes halted at the fifth fire, so he couldn't provide a solid location for the sixth. Although he managed to warn them of the fifth arson, there were thousands of homes and only one target. One person survived, but it wasn't as if saving people had been his intention from the start. The FBI knew this well. Perhaps they didn't know _what_ his ulterior motive was at the moment, but they knew that he possessed one. Given their intelligence, he wasn't sure that it would take them much longer to figure it out.

He licked his chapped lips and leaned forward again, elbows on the table. And then he began to talk about a summer that haunted him and a childhood that he had always been trying to run away from. A few agents came and went, but that one man remained a constant fixture. The man named Aaron Hotchner. Despite the time constraints, he appeared no more vexed than Damian himself.

"A ton of people lived in that town. I can't remember everyone, of course. But all of them read or listened to the news; all of them knew of _me_. It was the hot news that summer, the talk of the town wherever you went – restaurants, hang-outs, stores, the gym – everywhere. I haven't got a clue as to who it might be any more than you do. You'll have to give me more than this." Those were the same words he fed the man in prison. The man's lips pressed into a thin, impatient line.

"Was there anyone that you particularly disliked? Was there anyone who particularly disliked you or had a reason to dislike you? Even if it was a minor thing, it might still be relevant."

"I was disliked by a lot of people and I disliked a lot of people myself. I'm sure I don't need to tell you my entire history of juvenile delinquency. I was one of those annoying kids who never paid attention in school, who the teachers saw a lot in detention, and someone who didn't give a damn about what others thought of me. I hated the people who thought I was bad the moment I stepped in the room for a long time, but after awhile I stopped caring. I had my friends, but they were just high school friends."

"But by committing all those arsons, you _were_ seeking attention. When you weren't able to get it from school or at home, it evolved into something else. You so happened to fixate on fire because it's destructive and attention-grabbing, something no one can ignore. And the town didn't ignore it, did they?"

He regarded the FBI agent with the same caution he applied to new guards in prison. They were always unpredictable, unstable creatures, and the best rookies were hard to read. Whereas one minute they might be imitating a statue, the next they were in a screaming frenzy over some supposedly major infraction to assert their dominance. Agent Hotchner had none of _that_ unpredictability, but he was unable to be read all the same. It was fair, considering the man's job of _doing_ the reading.

"They might've ignored the kid next door whose father beat the shit out of him, but they couldn't ignore a burning building, no. Maybe you're right. Maybe I was 'seeking attention'. The point was that most people had some dislike of me or were indifferent. I'm sure a lot of them hated me after I was caught. I can't remember, really. Even that night is blurry, so I can't recall _who_ was screaming at me and who the cops shielded me from being assaulted with shovels and rocks and crap."

"Alright," Hotchner said. They were unable to come to a consensus over that – no matter how much they pried into his brain, it was simply impossible to pinpoint a single person to fit their description. "What about your crimes? How did you carry them out? There was some amount of preparation and planning. You worked your way up from small places in town to bigger buildings that were the nexus of community life. After that, why did you set fire to a house? Did you have a grudge against the people living there?"

The corners of his lips twitched with the accompanying memories. "I wasn't always friendly with the guy who lived in the house. He was a bit of a jerk, the kind that just looks like a goody-two shoes. That type," he shrugged. "But I didn't want to kill him. Maybe someone would say that I'd threatened to before, but that was only a passing comment. Kids joke about that all the time. I chose his house because I did hate his guts. And I wanted a house because it's…more personal, I guess you'll say.

"As for _how _I did it," he pondered. The photographs on the board stared at him. He had done it the same way every time. That just went to show how much the others cared. "It was kind of easy. Just a lighter – that was all I needed. The oil was a bit harder to get, but you find a way when you're desperate. I could drive, but I couldn't just buy a whole bunch of oil and say it was for a bonfire or something. Instead, I just stole what we had at home – from the grill, the lawnmower, that sort of thing.

"Your little forensics guys probably found the cloths I used to spread the fires. I just smashed the fire alarms and stayed out of the way of the cameras. It wasn't that hard. Everyone knew how to avoid the cameras when you didn't want to get caught doing something stupid or illegal. Is that enough for you?" The agent's facial expressions shifted a minuscule amount as he spoke, this time leaving the room without a second glance at the man in the handcuffs.

Of course he could care less about the actual criminal behind these fires. He had no doubt that this man was guilty, that he killed to prove a point and didn't care how many people were hurt in the process. Maybe his entire point was to cause as much pain as possible for those involved. He heard brief, insignificant catches of the other agents' conclusions about his copycat. He was in a panic, prolific because of it, but they now knew that there was no grand execution behind the arsons. It was hard to screw this up. A kid had done it.

Although he still got caught and landed in prison. A small scowl crossed his face, though he might not have noticed had he not glanced up and seen himself in the mirror. Scowls and glares were regular features in his everyday life, and in truth he had a hard time remembering the last time he had genuinely laughed.

A smile, though, he had given a genuine smile not so long ago in the confines of his jail cell. He addressed no one except for lovely fate and the corner that contained his meager laundry. He had lost the ability to believe that hope existed because even his young, childish fantasies could never anticipate the perfect timing the FBI provided him. Any earlier and he might never succeed and any later and he would miss the chance altogether. And he had held onto a small sliver of hope all these years for the simple fact that it was still _possible._

Another agent stepped in, a blonde one, a woman who had passed through perhaps only once or twice before. He had been content to fade into the wallpaper as they conducted their business, speaking only to Agent Hotchner, but he glanced up as the woman paused at the other end of the table. That reminded him. Except for the absolutely rigid expression and maturity, the woman faintly resembled a teacher he had in high school around the time of his arsons. She was two or three years out of graduate school, young and naïve and still an incompetent teacher.

She had caught him fooling around with a girl on more than one occasion. Now that he reconsidered those memories, perhaps that was the only reason he hated her so much. He never paid attention during her class, and he couldn't even recall which subject that had been. She gave him grief about fooling around in a corner of the hallway, though. And she had blonde hair that was always in a tight ponytail. She might have looked around this woman's age now.

"Did you really not mean to kill that family?" she asked. He scowled, wishing that he could cross his arms before his chest, but he had been robbed of that right long ago. It was still a stubborn human reflex. The accusation always stung, no matter if ten years or twenty years had elapsed, and he was hardly foolish enough to believe that she doubted his guiltiness. Tones of voice always betrayed something, which was why he had decided to bury his hopes and most intimate emotions in a place nearly impossible to reach again.

The anger was always the first emotion to resurface, though.

"I didn't," he spat defiantly. "They were supposed to be out. Their car wasn't in the driveway. I didn't hear a thing when I broke in the house. Why didn't they stop me if they were just at home sleeping? The son at least should have been awake. I don't know how they got there. I admitted to everything else. I set all those fires, I stole gasoline, I got into fistfights, I punched a cop, and I even killed those people _by accident_."

"They were tied up in the master bedroom. Of course no one could stop the fire or call the fire department then."

"That's why I'm saying that I didn't do it. I didn't tie anyone up and I sure as hell had no way of doing it alone. The guy was on the football team. His father was a big guy. I'm pretty sure no matter how much I threatened them they would have managed to bash my head in, _at least_. Besides, it doesn't matter much now, does it?" he huffed. "They're dead and I'll be rotting in jail for another ten years, _if_ I can't win an appeal in five. I've got no future and they've got no future. Either way you want to look at it, we're fair now."

She gave him a strange look, but perhaps it was only strange because he had seen so little variety in facial expressions these last ten years. Nothing deeper or more profound than banal anger and disdain ever graced anyone's face in jail.

"Tell me about your family," she said as she pulled a rolling desk chair over. He narrowed his eyes, clenched his fists to show his bitter resentment. "How did they treat you when you were younger?"

So she wanted to avoid the messy questions for now. That was fine. He didn't have to flip out for a few more minutes. He shrugged in response. Not that it was particularly hard to remember those tumulus months, but they were less than pleasant either. "They were decent, I guess. I didn't want much to do with them at all. I guess they tried early on, but anyone would get tired of a kid that hates you and does nothing but get into trouble. They had a kid already, too, but she and I never really got along. We didn't hate each other either, though."

"Why did they turn you in? Parents usually go to all lengths to protect their kids, even if it's just to protect their own bad parenting," she insisted. He scoffed, pausing for a moment to glare. So she didn't have tact after all. Not that this was a terribly sensitive subject anymore, but it still grated on his nerves. His foster parents hadn't visited once since his trial and detainment, but he was sure the agents knew that.

"Who knows but them? I didn't exactly get an answer when I asked. They seemed kind of scared though. So maybe they weren't being malicious or maybe they were and were just really good at hiding it. They didn't even want to sit on the side where I was during the trial." He stopped, because he simply had nothing else to say on the subject. It had once filled him with the most extreme levels of anger that he had ever experienced, but even that was empty. The fury had died down to a low thrum, a familiar irritation.

He stared at the marker on the whiteboard for awhile. He could not hate so intensely anymore. Although the thought scared him, although he probably should have saved it for when the woman left, he allowed himself to wonder: what if he couldn't _love_ so intensely anymore? Thin, sharp coils of fear strangled his heart. It might be too late to retrieve those emotions now.

* * *

><p><strong><em><em>**• 4/5/12 Edits: I rewrote this story because I didn't like the direction it was heading in. The plot doesn't change, but I started in a different place. Hope I'm able to write better now that I picked a spot I like.

• I studied existentialism briefly in school. It's fascinating, but overall a negative outlook on life. For those of you who remember Reid's little speech over existentialism, _Grendel_ by John Gardner and _No Exit_ by Jean-Paul Sartre are works of existentialism and personal favorites of mine.


	2. Second Chapter is Manipulation of Fact

_**Faith in Numbers**_

_**The Second Chapter is a Manipulation of Fact**_

The longer the agents forced him to recollect the past, the clearer those events became. It left him perplexed; how was it that he could associate those memories with different emotions than the ones he now experienced? It was as if he had stepped away from the past, as if he were watching a movie of that summer's events flicker over a screen. This never happened in prison, where his memories had been stagnant for the past ten years.

The blonde haired woman had left ages ago, and she and a few others came and went numerous times after that. The clock behind his head had recorded another two hours before all the agents returned to the room, just as he was about to nod off from sheer boredom. He observed them behind lazy eyelids, coming to the logical conclusion that their copycat had made another move. He heard the words _more, prolific, bastard, _and _how,_ before he was able to combine the phrases to make sense.

"Geez, that guy's got more anger issues than I do. And _I'm_ the one who's been in jail for ten years," he mumbled aloud. He was hardly aware that he had said anything at all until the agents turned in his direction. The updates pictures were on the board, fresh from the printer, probably still warm and smelling of ink. Damian straightened in his chair, moving his numb limbs around the best he could. The blonde haired woman moved out of the way to allow him a view of the board.

His eyes strayed from the charred corpses slumped in the center of an open area that might have once been a living room. Agent Hotchner had showed him a photograph of his last fire, the grotesque thing he could barely stand to glance at. He instead concentrated on the victims' normal pictures, smiling things taken for school or a driver's license. It was the standard fare: a Caucasian family, a mother and a father and some kids. The father was heavyset, the mother slightly less than him, and their children included one girl and one boy.

That was a pity; the girl was only fifteen. The entire family had dark hair with varying eye colors. Damian might never have taken note of this fact had he not stilled the instant he saw the son's face. He was probably fresh out of high school, with styled dark hair and fair, smooth features, eyes some indiscernible shade of hazel as far as Damian could see. His gaze immediately flickered to the location recently marked in bright red on a map, and to his increasing dread he realized it was some ways away from the previous crime scenes.

"It means something to you now, doesn't it?"

His head snapped painfully to the side, settling on Agent Hotchner with an imperceptible hiss from his clenched jaw. His eyes burned in ways unfamiliar to him after so many years, and although he now knew the son to be Cameron Reis, of a totally different age, his bound hands still trembled. This might be the only picture he would ever be able to form that was close to the original, and now he refused to look at the crime scenes more than ever.

"_It's nothing_," he spat. It was anything but. Some of the facial features were different, but how long had it been since he saw that person? It frightened him, but he was beginning to forget his face. That was only one of the reasons why this was such a golden opportunity. He swallowed air, quivering for a moment, before fixing his eyes on the picture again, however unwise the decision was. "He just looks _remarkably _like someone I knew."

"Who's that?" Hotchner said quickly, motioning to the tall dark-skinned man who had been holding a sleek silver laptop. They had the device set up in no time as he questioned Damian.

"Sebastian Brown. I knew him because a friend of mine knew his sister. He's a few years younger than I am," Damian managed to say. He glanced at the computer, surprised to hear a woman's voice emit from the speakers. Agent Hotchner maneuvered the screen so he could also see the brightly colored woman and the files she was bringing up over the connection. Not that he really understood computers outside the basics. There hadn't been much of a chance to stay updated concerning technology in the joint. He certainly had never spoken to anyone from the "outside world" in all those ten years.

Two pictures appeared on the screen. One was a high school photo from the year Damian had been arrested, the other an updated version of the same man in a driver's license taken the year before. He almost lost it right there and then. He was more mature, certainly, but still had that boyish look about him as an adult. He wanted so desperately to know more. What did he do in college, what was his job now? Did he have a family, a girlfriend? He cringed at the prospect of the man having kids.

"He was a lot closer than an acquaintance, wasn't he?" the dark haired woman asked this. Damian scowled and shook his head.

"I was just surprised, that's all. It's nothing special. He was a nice kid, three years younger than me. Geez am I old now. I haven't thought about him in ages. Wonder how he's doing," he said, not that any of the agents believed him. He had been thinking about him recently, though they probably had no idea of how often.

"He's using this deliberately to get your attention. People are dying because he wants you to realize he's there," the older agent, the one called Rossi, said severely. Damian pursed his lips and nodded. Though he wouldn't admit it now, not when he had no leverage, his list of suspects had shrunk to a considerably small size. There could be only a few perpetrators of this crime. Few, very few, knew of his relation to Sebastian Brown and fewer would think of using this against him.

"But why does he want my attention?" He voiced the agents' thoughts out loud. Perhaps he had a small idea, but he couldn't be absolutely sure yet. For the moment he watched passively as the agents went over Sebastian Brown's life on the computer. He attended Ithaca University, graduated with a degree in information technology, and worked for a firm in New York City. Currently unmarried, and he had had moved out of his parents' house into a suburban place outside the city.

_No criminal charges,_ he read with barely contained disbelief. A massive burden migrated from his shoulders to a far off place. He could barely trust this stroke of luck. No criminal charges as an adult or an adolescent. He was a good student. It had taken a few counseling sessions to right him after the arsons and murders in their hometown, but he was almost too happy to believe. At least, Damian considered him happy. He had to be. With a life like that, he had better be happy.

Agent Hotchner dismissed the other agents, logging off the laptop and taking it with them. The blonde haired woman stayed, lingering around the table, until she came and took a seat across from him again.

"He's more than an acquaintance."

At this point their relationship didn't matter. But he was willing to throw them a bone, for all the fortunate things they had brought him. It wasn't a very good bone, but he couldn't risk much else. Not yet. And in fact, it would confuse more than it would help.

"Yeah, more than an acquaintance, though I'm willing to bet he doesn't remember much of me."

Yeah, someone with a happy life wouldn't have any need to remember some murderer-slash-arsonist from the town he grew up in ten years ago. Furthermore, they hadn't even been close friends. There was no way of knowing this unless the agents asked him or Sebastian Brown directly, and the man definitely wouldn't remember more than that.

"I guess I loved him." _Not in __**that**__ way,_ he added mentally. But the FBI couldn't know that. They might figure out the truth sooner or later on their own, so he didn't bother giving them the full version. It didn't matter to him; let them assume what they wanted. The blonde haired woman seemed mildly surprised, but she recovered quickly. It probably wasn't the most shocking thing she had ever heard in her career. Deciding that he'd give her a break, he added, "But I'm straight."

She nodded, "I see, so it was only him?"

_Let's go with that,_ he thought as he shrugged. His eyes flickered back to the board, focusing on the map instead of the pictures. It could only be one of a few people, but he didn't know exactly how many people had known about their relationship. He could only guess that it was due to _that_ incident. It had also happened approximately ten years ago. In fact, he supposed it could _only_ be due to that incident.

"Can I ask you something?" he said suddenly. At the woman's nod he went ahead, concentrating on the red marks on the board. There really wasn't any good way of asking something like this, he supposed, but he had nothing to lose if they questioned him. "What's the statute of limitations on 'obstruction of justice'?"

"It should be ten years or so; why do you want to know? Does it have to do with Brown?" the woman retorted. Although it certainly had no other purpose, Damian shook his head. The numbers were rearranging themselves in his mind. He was arrested towards the end of the summer, incarcerated a year later after the trial. That incident in the recreational center happened about six months prior to his arrest. It was currently nine years and a few months later.

There was time. It wasn't much, but more than he had ever hoped for. "It's nothing, really. I was just curious. Hopefully my struggling that night doesn't count as an obstruction of justice. That would really suck. I get parole in five years, you know? My sentence was supposed to be twenty-five years for 'cooperating'. If I can make an appeal on good behavior, maybe I can get out in fifteen or twenty. I'll be in my mid-thirties or early forties by that time. True, I don't really have a future anymore, but anything's better than living in a box for the rest of your life."

She gave him a sympathetic smile, but they both knew the truth. If he didn't like being in jail, he should never have committed those arsons in the first place. He knew that.

Eventually she left. He wasn't sure what they could do with the knowledge that he supposedly "loved" Sebastian Brown _(not in that way, mind you)_. Either way, it was time to focus on those handcuffs. He had the opportunity to find his address when the computer technician pulled those files up, so he was set there. His face hadn't been in the press for nearly eight years now, but he had no money and no mode of transportation. His pit pocketing skills were horrendous, though he had done a lot of stealing from convenience stores in his adolescence.

Damian Cooper had no intention of returning to jail; that much was obvious. But if he couldn't avoid arrest again, he had to hold out for at least four months, enough to override that statute of limitations. Whatever happened to him afterwards would either been a pleasant turnout of events or the life sentence he had managed to avoid nine odd years ago. He doubted his ability to evade the authorities for much longer than four months, let alone the rest of his life. It was inevitable that he was going back to jail, perhaps for good.

Still, he didn't stop trying to figure a way around the handcuffs. He _supposed_ he could dislocate a joint or two, but that would put him in an awful lot of pain. He wasn't quite sure whether or not that would work. Maybe if he were younger, had thinner hands or something, it would be possible. He stared at the heavy steel bands and huffed. Not that his hands were huge, since he was still rather skinny, but it was _painful_. He'd probably end up biting his tongue off.

Perhaps they would take these things off when they stuck him in a jail cell for the night.

Indeed they did take the cuffs off, to his surprise, when the local chief of police showed him an unoccupied holding cell somewhere around ten at night. He supposed it would be unethical or detrimental to keep him bound the entire time they needed him, especially since he wasn't a suspect this time and was lending them his help. Agent Hotchner fixed him with a stern look as the chief of police locked the door, a warning behind tired eyes.

Damian grinned, waving one hand at the man. His mismatched eyes gleamed in the dim, dusty lighting. "See you tomorrow. Hope we can catch the guy then, huh?"

The chief left to close up the rest of the station while the agent paused to speak at the cell's door. "You know who might be behind this, don't you? But you don't want to tell because of Brown and your relationship to him. He is currently on a business trip out of state. Otherwise, know that we would have sent agents in to protect him. As it is, all airports in New York State are on standby, and we've called him to inform him to stay where he is.

"That should be enough for you. Think about that tonight, before you go to sleep," the agent told him. Damian blinked, leaning forward on his knees and elbows. FBI agents should have been as efficient as possible, but he was surprised that they would go that far. He allowed himself a smile, a thin one. He needed to know _where_ Sebastian Brown was.

"Where is he right now? What's he doing?" he piped up, voice tainted by curiosity. A barely perceptible tone of desperation touched his syllables. He was willing to play up whatever sympathy he could garner from the man. _I might never see him again in my life,_ was the message he wanted to send. _So please throw me a bone here._

The man's eyes narrowed, as if it might not be the wisest choice, and of course it wasn't. "He's in Connecticut. Not far, but not close either. He's in IT now, pretty well off. Tell me, Cooper, why you're so interested in him. You weren't even in school together at the same time."

"He's a charming person," Damian chuckled, _or at least I hope he is._ "He wasn't extraordinarily kind to me or anything, but I did like him. I liked him more than any of the others in that town. He may have disapproved of things I did, for example, but he didn't hate me for it like everyone else. Not many people did that. And he's just the type of person you can befriend easily, that's all. Thanks for telling me, agent. I'd always wondered what happened to him."

The agent nodded, opened his mouth, and promptly shut it again. Perhaps he was about to say "good night" and thought better of it. Soon after he disappeared down the hall, shoes clicking against the concrete, the lights flickered and blinked from existence.

* * *

><p>• Edit 44/12: Picking up the pace. Much better.

• No, Damian isn't gay. Although by adamantly stating so, it doesn't leave much for the mind to imagine. Oh well. I wanted the true relation he has with Sebastian Brown to be secret for a while longer, but it didn't work out that way without people thinking he really _is_ in love with the guy.

• I'm not exactly sure if you can escape handcuffs that way. In fiction, characters do it sometimes. Don't try it. Theoretically it should be possible as long as you have slim hands, since the wrist is about the width of your hand without the protruding bone from your thumb.


End file.
